The idea is to tear down the walls of the garden. In this case Apple advertises security and quality control as features of the fees for their required app store. If the garden is not actually more secure and the quality not actually controlled in reality than any other garden, then there will be an argument to allow anyone to start a garden on iOS.

Epic wants their own walled garden. They aren't anti-walled garden.

Let's not pretend that one greedy billionaire is the good one here.

Would an oligopoly (at worst) need to be strictly as bad as a monopoly though? I don't really care that the fight is mainly the one of greedy billionaires, as long as it reduces the prices for consumers.

Plus Epic does not really proposes the same kind of walls as Apple do. The worst they can do are exclusive titles on some typically somehow open platforms (and yep I guess they would take a deal to have an authorized store on a closed one, but for now I'm not sure such beasts exist anyway -- and again, why would it be worse than a monopoly?), they don't even sell only that, and the people they get exclusivity from had the choice to do something else anyway (without renouncing to whole platforms)

I mean, if you're against the monopoly it makes little sense to be for an oligopoly. Either you have tunnels that lead between different walled gardens, not really changing much except which company receives your money, or you tear down the walls of all walled gardens and users might just get attacked as they try to make their way over to the other walled gardens (that being 'free fortnite vbucks' scams).

At least more gardens means more multiple redundancies.

Just like many comments on HN keeps arguing that Apple is better than Google because of privacy then Epic is the good guy in this because more walled gardens are better than only one even if it is still not open.

> Let's not pretend that one greedy billionaire is the good one here.

Who's doing that?

If Apple's AppStore isn't protecting users, why not let there be competing AppStores and let users decide which serves them best?

fine by me. If there's an EGS on IOS/Android, I can continue to ignore its existence and use the app/play store, while people who opt into that garden do what they need to do.

I don't care about which billionaire benefits the most, I care about options. IOS has zero options (that don't void your phone) if your app isn't approved by Apple.

> Let's not pretend that one greedy billionaire is the good one here.

Out of curiosity, are you responding to me or digesting my point? I’m not pretending anything.

Another one from 2021. The gist is that the Apple App Store is hosting multimillion dollar scams:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-...

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/8/22272849/apple-app-store-s...

Especially when one of Apple's main points is that the app store ensures a secure environment for their users to download apps. If they ended up verifying this many unsecure apps, then what's the point?

The developers, e.g. for WeChat, downloaded a copy of Xcode, not from Apple, but from a random third party, and when they ran it had to click through warnings about it being unsigned. Then TenCent uploaded their now hacked WeChat, compiled with the hacked Xcode, signed by them, to the AppStore. This is not Apple’s fault. This is on TenCent and the other developers who did this. The list of hacked Apps was published by Apple and linked to in the article.

> This is not Apple’s fault

This is a lot to unpack. Let me narrow it down here:

- Developers submit app to AppStore

- Apple scans it, manually reviews it, certifies it meets security, privacy, and quality guidelines

- Apple allows users to download the app from the AppStore

- Users assume apps on the AppStore are secure because Apple loudly proclaims this

- Users are infected with malware

And this isn't Apple's fault? Of course this isn’t a tenable position for Apple. There’s no way to catch everything. But they market this, and use it as justification for their walled garden.

> There’s no way to catch everything. But they market this, and use it as justification for their walled garden.

This is a valid point, and also the reason this particular attack is so interesting. Apple's system relies on holding people/companies accountable for submitting malware. Apple has the power to knock a company out of the App Store, so the company is incentivized to not push the limits. This hack is an attack directly on this relationship-based system. It's an attack on Apple's ability to punish. This doesn't make Apple's system worthless, just worth less.

No, if Apple is taking 30%, they should be doing random bytecode level analysis of apps to make sure there's n hidden malware.

> - Users are infected with malware

Also, it was less malware and more just a low-profile privacy invasive SDK.

It feels like a PR disaster to everyone involved even if they're not part of the actual lawsuit. See also: Sony

Speaking of PR guys at Apple, I really miss the day when Apple PR were run by Katie Cotton. The genius in PR and marketing.

>Well, this Epic lawsuit...

And this is the issue that no one seems to be getting. Epic will lose. As a gaming company they never really have a case, I do admire them to have the courage to go against the largest cooperation in modern history. But it provide enough materials for their end goal for other parties, whether that is EU or US regulators.

Story is not written yet, and I don't trust armchair lawyers to predict the outcome of something that complex.

The Dutch East India Trading Company wants to know your location. ;)

I guess that depends on your definition of "modern history". Yes, Apple has a lot of cash, but is their current top corp based on value mean they are bigger in influence/effect on people's lives than others in history. I'm thinking AT&T pre-breakup, Standard Oil, rail roads, etc. I understand what the point the GP was making. It just sent me down a tangential bit of thinking. Ugh, and on a Saturday!

Interesting thoughts. I think a lot of this comparing Apple to the companies you listed is the wrong way to think about them.

First, it's not just Apple. The App Store/ecosystem concept is a newish concept, and probably needs completely new types of regulation outside of anti-trust. Apple, Google, MS, Sony, Nintendo, etc... are for the most part monopolies in their respective worlds, but fail at the traditional monopoly definition. Waiting for a company to achieve an AT&T or Standard Oil level level of power is an outdated way of thinking. Apple also doesn't have anywhere near that level of power.

Epic might not win against Apple directly but the end result will likely be exactly the same when the EU are done with Apple.

>As a gaming company they never really have a case

given that individuals have brought up cases that ultimately landmarked as Surpreme court rulings, I have to say this is the oddest take on the lawsuit I've seen yet.

What made Katie Cotton a genius?

Their only end goal was to get a better outcome for themselves. It came out in the trial that if they had gotten the special deal they were seeking, you probably wouldn’t have heard a peep from them.

Somehow that seemed obvious to me without the direct evidence. I have no doubt that if the shoe was on the other foot, Epic would be super happy to be the gatekeeper taking in 30%>

No they wouldn’t. They already run their own store where they take 12%. Tim Sweeney has been a vocal supporter of open platforms/markets for many years. This action is costing Epic TONS of money. In no way does it make financial sense whatsoever. If you read the internal Epic documents from this case, it becomes quite clear that this is Tim Sweeney’s personal crusade against Apple.

The only reason they do that is because they are trying to break into Steam's near monopoly market position. They are not above anti-consumer practices like exclusives. I have no doubt that if they could, they would take that 30% cut.

Why would they choose 12% and not 25% or 20% then? Either of those would be better than Steam.

Calling exclusives “anti-consumer” is basically nonsense. Exclusives have been a mainstay of the gaming world for ages. The actual harm they cause to the consumer is minimal, no different than first party titles do (like Valve’s own Half-Life, etc).

5% less isn’t enough to get over the inertia of being on steam.

> read the internal Epic documents from this case

how can we do that?

It used to be in a public documents folder on Box. The link doesn’t seem to be working anymore so maybe they took it down for the weekend (or permanently) https://app.box.com/s/6b9wmjvr582c95uzma1136exumk6p989/folde...

Just discovered that the Box link I posted in my other comment actually still does work, it just doesn’t work on mobile for some reason.

Then why did Epic ask for a special deal from Apple?

Can I use in game currency bought from somewhere else in FortNite?

> Tim Sweeney has been a vocal supporter of open platforms/markets for many years.

If he was, he would be against exclusives, but he pays handsomely for those.

These aren't even comparable.

- Epic marketplace has a few exclusive video game titles for their marketplace.

- Their games can be installed on multiple platforms.

- Also, there are dozens of competing video game marketplaces, each with their own exclusives. You can't play Zelda on PC.

Vs.

- There are only two brands of smartphones. Everyone is forced into this duopoly.

- iPhone is a device that doesn't let users repair it

- iPhone is a device that doesn't let users install their own software

- iOS forces all commerce through Apple's tax rails

- iOS prevents forming a relationship with customers as it gives businesses a disposable fake contact. These are "Apple's customers", not yours.

Businesses have two choices: fuck off and die of irrelevancy, or put on the Apple gimp suit and get fucked. There's no way this was ever legal. We've all just been gaslighted by Apple's mind-bending PR. They've constructed the biggest monopoly of all time.

Epic and especially FortNite is it’s own marketplace. You can’t buy in game merchandise without going through Epic’s payment system. T

As far as relationships, I don’t want every business to have relationship with me. For those companies that need one, they can have users register.

How is the App Store any more illegal than the consoles? Yes every physical game you buy for a console still has to be approved by the console makers.

Because I'm not trying to run my dating app on the Epic platform. And if gamer dating was my thing, I'd have twenty or so different market places to target.

Apple is the only game in town, and they bully everyone. Their rise to this position and stranglehold over all commerce was an illegal move that will be corrected by the DOJ.

Imagine if AOL controlled the Internet and all websites had to pay 30% to AOL. That's the world we live in with Apple.

Apple is not the only game in town. It doesn’t even have the majority market share.

Not to mention that there is also the web.

No website has to pay Apple 30%. In fact, no dating app has to pay Apple 30%. They can all force you to pay on the web and Apple won’t get any cut.

The web is increasingly not an option and you know it.

So tell me why the web isn’t an option for a dating app?

Absolutely.

Do you think Tinder would have caught on as a website? Apple trained people to use apps.

Furthermore, what about real time video transcoding? Apple kept their web browser purposely hobbled to force people into their dungeon. You can't use a multitude of modern, advanced capabilities with safari. How can I do advanced workloads in parallel, at high performance, in the background? I can't because Apple.

Tender interactions very much could work on the web.

You can’t do advanced workloads in the background with native apps on iOS. Apple strictly limits what an app can do in the background to conserve battery life. Safari doesn’t stop running in the background.

I don’t know about performance, but if someone could write a performant JS/web assembly transcoder that could run on the web, since iOS devices routinely trounce all Android devices with respect to browser performance, I’m sure it could be done.

>Tender interactions very much could work on the web.

it's not about what "could work", a 15fps game "could work".

it's "what is successful". And for a mobile audience, UI/UX engineers have spend decades determining that after a certain amount of lag, that experience is lost.be it for technical or political reasons, Safari and by extension, much of HTML 5 cannot meet this UX criteria. So an application has an massive advantage.

>but if someone could write a performant JS/web assembly transcoder that could run on the web

Sounds like a Progressive Web App: https://web.dev/what-are-pwas/

They've come far but are far from perfect. It's also moot in this case, since certain optimizations would need to rely on understanding Safari's infrastructure. Which is closed source. They can optimize it for webkit, but any web dev can tell you that interplatform quirks are the 2nd 90% of the battle.

Compare them to Steam and GOG, not apple.

- GoG will give you DRM free downloads

- Steam allows you to give out keys for free then use their infrastructure to download/manage the game (humble bundle steam keys)

- None of them force exclusives as far as I know

> Businesses have two choices: fuck off and die of irrelevancy, or put on the Apple gimp suit and get fucked.

No they don't. There's plenty of businesses that are alive and well and not getting fucked by anyone.

Can you cite big businesses that are successful that is Android exclusive?

There’s nothing wrong with exclusives. They aren’t any more “anti-consumer” than first party titles (like Valve’s own Half-Life, Portal, etc)

You are right about their end goal, and this is expected from a company with shareholders, I think this is part of the job of a CEO.

But you don't know if this is their only end goal.

If they could get a special deal, do you really think they would take the case to trial, spend the money and have as much of their dirty laundry become part of the record?

I don't read in tea leaves, we can only infer their goals from the PR and what seems to be their best self-interest.

Internally this is probably a high-risk high-reward kind of plan, but this is a wild guess.

I was actually surprised the went this alone instead of trying to get other devs involved to seek class action status.

They want a policy change, not a $40 coupon.

If they had gotten all of the concessions they wanted, there would have been no reward.

If they could sell digital goods using their own payment system within the app like Amazon can with Amazon Video, what would they gain from this?

The PR doesn’t tell the story like what came out during court procedures.

>If they could sell digital goods using their own payment system within the app like Amazon can with Amazon Video, what would they gain from this?

the ability to potential lauch EGS on IOS. Success or not, they want that opportunity to try.

If they could get a special deal, they probably wouldn't have standing to take the case to trial, so they literally couldn't take it to trial.

I suspect they would still want to. My personal suspicion about the motivation behind this case is that it's not really about Epic Game's profit, but Tencent's. Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games, and owns a lot of companies who stand to make a lot more money if Apple's forced to open up the app store.